With a scoop of a net Tokyo chef Naohito Hashimoto selects a poisonous blowfish, considered a delicacy in Japan, and with a few deft strokes of his gleaming knife starts the delicate process of preparing it for a customer.

China's state banks make money far too easily and their monopoly on financial services has to be broken if cash-starved private enterprises are to get timely access to capital, state media cited Premier Wen Jiabao as saying on Tuesday.

The German parliament's email system was hampered for several hours for more than 4,000 staffers and deputies when hundreds of workers responded to an errant email sent by one staffer named Babette to all 4,032 co-workers.

A ban on luxury spas at hotels and massage parlors in the Maldives was lifted on Wednesday under pressure from the country's key tourism industry a week after it was imposed as part of an effort to curb perceived vice.

Chile's government wants men in the South American country to take off their ties to help fight global warming, hoping the campaign will save on air conditioning as summer starts in the southern hemisphere.

Shirtless men clad in red sweatpants have been lining up for days in Singapore's prime shopping district, part of an advertising gimmick revealing not just muscle but also a gradual unpeeling of the city state's puritanical ways.

The world is forecast to grow hotter, sea levels to rise, intense weather to wreak even more destruction and the new deal struck by governments in Durban to cut greenhouse gas emissions will do little to lessen that damage.

A prototype passenger spaceship developed by privately owned Space Exploration Technologies arrived in Florida on Sunday for launch on a practice cargo run to the International Space Station, officials said on Monday.

Australia's dominant phone company, Telstra Corp, will be $5 billion better off working with the government's new high-speed broadband network than competing against it, an independent expert said, paving the way for shareholder approval.

The safe-haven Swiss franc nursed heavy losses in Asia on Friday, having posted record one-day falls against the euro and dollar after the Swiss National Bank threatened to step up its fight to curb the franc's strength.

South American finance ministers could agree on Friday on ways to strengthen the Latin American Reserve Fund, or FLAR as it is known in Spanish, to protect regional economies from global volatility, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said on Thursday.

U.S. stock futures rose 1 percent on Thursday after a sharp drop on Wall Street overnight, limiting losses in Asian share markets, though the focus was shifting to how Europe reacts to a sovereign debt crisis that is now threatening its banking system.

Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda sharpened his warning to currency markets on Thursday in the wake of the yen's rise near record highs against the dollar, keeping markets jittery about the possibility of a second round of intervention.